Projects and Products to Make the World a Happier Place. Jennifer Heynen designs sewing patterns, craft kits, quilting fabric, licenses her art to companies for Garden Flags, Bags, Accessories and more all in a Happy and Bright Style.

Jennifer Jangles

Monday, January 31, 2011

Happy Monday! Wow there were a lot of good guesses. Lot's of folks guessed fabric and it is going to be coming in the next month. Hold tight, I will show you as soon as I have my hands on some. In the meantime, check out my ribbon! I could not be any happier with how it turned out. A great company, Renaissance Ribbons is producing it. The photo is of the blues, greens, and purples colorway. There is more to come in other colors. These are woven on a loom so the colors are very rich and have a lot of depth.

Boot-C guessed it correctly so I am sending you some of my new ribbon! Send me an e-mail with your shipping address. jennifer(at) jangles.net

Saturday, January 29, 2011

This packaged arrived on my doorstep this week. I am super excited to show you what it is, but I thought I would have some fun first. I was puzzled with the shape of the box and it's contents at first. I am wondering if you can guess. So leave me a comment with your best idea of what it could be in the box. The first person to guess correctly will win a bit of what's in the box. If no one guesses correctly.....then I will choose a random winner.

While your roaming the net today, head on over to Lima Beads. They just got in a fresh shipment of my toggles and butterfly pendants. They are all kinds of ready for spring.

You have until Monday to guess what's in the box.... Have a great day!

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Hey, Hey...it's coming together. I am so excited on how it's turning out. There is so much going on with web updates, sign permits, credit card services...oh I could go on and on, it's going to be awhile before there is something to sell in this place.

But for now here is a tour of my very pretty but empty store. The picture up top is of my new counter. Built it all by myself. Behind the counter is my chalkboard that is painted on the wall.

This big ol green board is what you see when you walk into the store. It will eventually have signs, magazine articles of mine, new fabric swatches and designs, etc. It's kid of the "what new in the Jennifer Jangles world" bulletin board. The bulletin board is 4' by 8' and I scored it for 30.00 at the Habitat restore! How cool is that?

Turn right after the bulletin board and you're in the studio and gallery. I think I have the store fixtures where I want them. I decided on lots of white and lime green. The girls and I are in loooove with my shade of green, it's the perfect lime green or at least we think it is. The main fixtures are all white to show off my work.

Lime green tables...

Jewelry case and bead display...

Another little nook with a display....

So let me know what you think. I will show you some work when things start coming out of the kiln. And one of these days soon I will have an actual grand opening date.... the commitment is scaring me!

Monday, January 24, 2011

Happy Monday morning to You! Oh boy what a weekend. Saturday was my birthday. Since it was my day, well really my weekend, I asked all the boys to help me work on the new shop. I had lots of building and fixing that needed to be done. They were all things I was avoiding and I figured with some help we could knock them out. Well we did and I got a new floor for the gallery. I also bought some fixtures, they are be painted as we speak and I will give you a bigger peek tomorrow. But back to the floor...isn't it great? It totally makes the space, I am super excited about it......love it!

As you can see we are all up to our eyeballs in work here. Not to mention, I am working on some very big top secret projects, and I will be exhibiting at the local quilt show in a couple of weeks. That totally sneaked up on me. Whew!

I will be back tomorrow with a thorough sneak peek.... have a good one,

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Wow, counting the weekends and MLK day yesterday, the boys were out of school for ten days straight! Today everyone is back to where they are supposed to be and the snow is melting. Wahoo!

Today's to-do list is 2 pages long... web updates new work on Etsy store sign oh, I will save you from having to read it all.

The most exciting part is I am finally setting up the store portion of my studio. I got the studio up and running for making buttons pretty quick, all the extra stuff is taking time. With the holidays and snow getting in the way of progress, I finally feel like I might be making some. I got two tables built today. The parts for the tables have been on the floor for two months, so seeing them up and in use is amazing to me. I even started a bit if a display. I need to drag out all of my display stuff and really get to work but that will have to be later in the week. Oh and the really big part of setting up the store...making things to sell.....I have nothing right now. The holidays wiped me out.

So you see number two on my to-do list is new work for Etsy. I just photographed some of it this morning...I am hoping it's up by tomorrow. I will let you know when it happens.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Yes, it's day four of no school....but I am headed to the studio. I'm told the main roads are clear and it's mostly the neighborhoods that are bad. I have lots waiting for me at the studio so I'm headed out in a bit.

This week at home has been fun and a nice break. I have really gotten used to sleeping in, I don't know what will happen when we have to get up for school again. I have also gotten a lot of computer and design stuff done. The things that usually get pushed aside for more pressing things like bead and button orders. I worked on some new sewing pattern designs, and did some portfolio work, and started designing the new front page of my website. This morning while still lying bed, I realized I should have been working on taxes! I totally forgot I need to start getting all of the paperwork and numbers gathered. Ugh....glad I just remembered today.

So I couldn't bare to show you another snowy picture so I found a starfish drawing in my notebook. I drew this when I was in warm and sunny Florida a few weeks ago.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

We have built a snow woman, played games, taken walks, watched movies, and slept a lot over these past three days. There is still no school and now it's not going to be over 30 degrees until Saturday. That means no melting and from what I can tell that's Georgia's snow removal plan.I think I a starting to feel a bit trapped today, so I am going to have to come up with something good to entertain myself.

Here are the duct taped pants I promised. We don't have snow pants or boots so I put a pair of pants on the guys and the fashioned some duct tape garbage bags as pants. We put another layer of pants on over the top. That was just in case we saw friends in our neighborhood. How embarrassing to be wearing plastic bags! They stayed warm and dry though and we did see friends.

I apologize about orders still not going out. Even if I could get to my studio to pack the boxes, we still don't have mail service.

I have been feeding the birds and squirrels with all our old crackers, they are loving it. Poor things don't get the Weather Channel to know it's going to snow. I am trying to help out.

I am rambling on here.....I guess that's what happens when your snowed in :)

Monday, January 10, 2011

8 inches of snow fell last night at our house. We have been warned about this since Friday and we and everyone else around here prepared for the storm. Still, we weren't expecting so much. It's always a mad dash to the grocery store before a storm. The stores stock extra bread and milk because everyone panics. I have to admit I have become one of those people. There is no way you will get me out on the roads with Georgia drivers in snow. So the first Krogers I went to yesterday I drove around the parking lot four times and could not get a spot. There were tons of people looking for spots, double parking, etc. I gave up and drove across town to a Krogers that has a giant parking lot. Inside was the craziest experience. Every Kroger employee was there stocking the shelves. Imagine the busiest Christmas eve shopping day and double it. That's how busy the store was with customers. The shelves were cleared of bottled water. You would have thought it was the end of the world. Peoples carts were piled high with essentials like water, milk, bread, and fire wood. It was very calm and they were playing soothing music. It was amazing to me because right before I left Nik and I were talking about how the pictures on the weather channel were showing empty grocery store shelves. We were wondering how they staged those photos because there was no way they were really empty. Boy were we wrong!

We're going to make the best of it, we have big plans today for playing in the snow. We cleared the driveway last night of our cars. One at the top for emergencies because there is no way to get up it in snow, and the other in the garage. Were thinking the driveway will be a good sled run. My boys haven't had snow pants or boots since we lived in Wisconsin 4 years ago, so I am working on some plans now for garbage bag and duct tape pants to keep them dry. It should be fun for one day. I am a little fearful of the ice coming this afternoon. I don't want to be home another day, I might go crazy. So if you placed an order at the end of the week please be patient and I will ship it as soon as I am back in the studio....hopefully tomorrow.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Look at this beautiful necklace! The gals over at Vintaj created it. Don't you just love my flower with their birds? And the little round bead inside the flower petals in the drop? So cute... If you want to read more about this one you can hop over to the Vintaj blog and read it here.

Betsy designed another necklace with Jennifer Jangles beads here. It's called Mama looks pretty, you'll have to go to their blog to see it.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

We got to take a side trip on our way to Florida to see my favorite artist Ruby C. Willaims. She might look a bit familiar to you if your a fan of folk art. She is well known and has paintings in the Smithsonian, House of Blues restaurants, and more. If you're thinking that you've seen her somewhere else then it might have been over at the Art Bead Scene. We did a month long challenge inspired by Ruby's paintings.

Ruby started painting signs for her families fruit stand in 2009. Folks kept asking to buy her paintings so she gladly started selling them. You can read more of her biography here. I had been hoping for a long time to go to her fruit stand. We did the best research we could to find it but it turns out no one really has her address listed on line when they talk about her. It's on highway 60 in Hillsborough county a couple of miles from the Polk county line. Bealsville is the closest city. When you drive down the highway there are lots of fruit stands but only one with paintings. You'll know you found Ruby.

It was the day after Christmas and I wasn't expecting anyone to actually be at the stand but I wanted to see where Ruby had painted my bird painting I had hanging in my living room. We pulled up to the stand and sitting there was Ruby! Nik and I were so excited.

It has frosted the night before so there was no fruit that day. She told us the strawberries wouldn't be good if she had picked them. We asked if we could look at her paintings and we wandered around. Back behind the tangerine tree was a barn full of her paintings.

It was so much fun looking through the stacks of paintings. She told us stories, about her inspiration for different paintings, and places she had traveled because of her paintings. She was a wonderful woman. Nik and I just kept looking at each other in shock that we were standing there with Ruby talking. We spent more than an hour that day chatting away about everything. She had Nik pick tangerines from her tree to take to the boys. Of course we bought a painting. It's the one up top in the picture with Ruby and I. We picked it out not knowing anything about it. But after we told her we wanted it she told us about it.

It says "The Day Just To Begin" She had just pulled that one off her fence that morning and set it out where people could see. She felt like she needed to put it out because of the words. It's a portrait of her getting ready to go out in the fields and pick produce. She said she came to the stand that day and wonder about who she would meet that day. That day it just happened to be us.What an experience!

Hey, Hey, Long time no blog....it's been a busy couple of weeks. I am happy to be going back to a routine this week. It was a relaxing break and that was something that I needed. It started out with snow the day after Christmas. The boys were thrilled my family, not so much. They were all headed out that day. Everyone made it safely home it just took a little longer than usual. I do hope that's the end of the snow for the year. I know...wishful thinking.

I got a taste of summer weather when we went to Florida for the week. It was so warm and sunny. I miss it....

We had a ton of fun, the best part was a dolphin research tour we went on. We took a boat out to the 10,000 islands which is really close to the everglades. We counted and photographed dolphins. Here is one playing in our boats wake. They were so close and I had fun taking a million pictures.

There were tons of shells where we stayed. I collected a bunch and I will photograph them this week, some still need to be cleaned. Here a little guy I found on the beach, don't worry I didn't take him home.

Of course it is now back to reality and the cold. We got home and our refrigerator was broken. Food sat all week so we had to throw out everything. That's not a great way to start the week, hopefully the repair man can come today. If not I guess it will be carry out again. I don't like to cook anyway.

Alright, there is so much to do today.....I hope you all had great holidays and it's good to be back.Wishing you a fabu 2011,

Book: Sew Small

BOOK: Stitch Kitsch

BOOK: Extraordinary Colors

BOOK: Ceramic Bead Jewelry

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Jennifer Jangles uses affiliate programs from time to time for income. These are links that lead to Amazon, Craftsy, and others. This helps me be able to bring you free projects. I never link to anything that I don't personally use or recommend, you can be sure of that. I take this very seriously. As always, please contact me if you have questions.